- January 25, 2025
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Driving around to look at Christmas lights is an all-American pastime during the holiday season.
In East County, that drive must include a spin through University Town Center.
Each year, the display gets bigger and brighter. A team of light specialists plan all year round to ensure the sightseers are dazzled.
The lighting spectacular kicked off the second week of November with a parade that was attended by upwards of 30,000 people this year.
Cliff McHenry, the director of project management for Benderson Development's Florida office, is the man in charge.
“I just get to play Santa or Clark Griswold for part of the year,” McHenry said.
McHenry shared a behind the scenes look at what goes into such an extraordinary display.
That’s a tough question to answer. I know when we reviewed it about five years ago, we calculated that there were more than 66 miles of lights if you connected the strands end to end. We’ve grown over the last five years, and as you can imagine, so have the miles of lights.
Planning typically starts the third week of January with a review of the most recent holiday season. We begin the holiday light installation the first week of September right after Labor Day and complete it by early November. It takes a massive effort by our vendors and our in-house team to complete the work. When you add in a couple of hurricanes like we had this year, it exponentially increased the challenge. We have such an amazing team that is committed to making the holidays great. Our work days often start at 3 a.m. and extend well into the evening.
We discovered some fresh new displays during our travels to Germany for the Christmasworld expo in January. The massive exhibit halls contained everything holiday-related you can imagine, presented by manufacturers from around the world. Babbo Natale (Italian Santa) and a snowman caught my attention, as they seemed to float through the convention hall bringing smiles to visitors. After several meetings with the manufacturer about the design, specs, power requirements and logistics, the order was placed. The manufacturing process took several months, and upon completion, the displays were put on a container ship headed from Italy to Miami. They arrived in November and are now installed at UTC. Santa Clause stands nearly 25 feet tall and our snowman slides on his rotund 15-foot belly.
Local schools from the area create their own unique holiday card for display. We provide the school with cabinet grade plywood and an allowance for art supplies, and the teachers collaborate with students to create true holiday masterpieces. Vote for your favorite artwork online, and the winning schools receive awards by category and a donation to their school.
Yes. Despite temperatures that are almost consistently in the 70s and 80s, we’re able to make a real ice rink. We’ve been working with a vendor for several years who specializes in seasonal ice rinks around the country. It’s a great experience for folks who have never seen ice skating or have always wanted to give it a try.
Lighting animation and sequencing is an effort we undertook about four years ago. It turned out to be a significant effort involving the creation of miles of network cabling, routers and switches, lights, receivers, controllers and some extremely smart and talented programmers and sequencers. The animation adds a whole new dimension to the holiday light experience.
That is probably best left to the imagination. I’m proud to be a part of a company that is sincerely committed to making a difference in the community and helping to spread holiday cheer to all those who visit UTC. I can’t think of any other place where you can experience a holiday light spectacular of this magnitude at no charge.
